Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works eBook

out there, the same perfume stolen up, the same star-shine
fallen, for millions of years in the past, and would
for millions of years to come. Close to where
the half-moon floated, a slow, narrow, white cloud
was passing—­curiously shaped. At one
end of it Felix could see distinctly the form of a
gleaming skull, with dark sky showing through its
eyeholes, cheeks, and mouth. A queer phenomenon;
fascinating, rather ghastly! It grew sharper
in outline, more distinct. One of those sudden
shudders, that seize men from the crown of the head
to the very heels, passed down his back. He shut
his eyes. And, instead, there came up before
him Kirsteen’s blue-clothed figure turned to
the sunset glow. Ah! Better to see that
than this skull above the land! Better to believe
her words: ’The world is changing, Felix—­changing!’
world is changing, Felix—­changing!’

THE END

BEYOND

by Johngalsworthy

“Che faro senza—!”

To Thomashardy

BEYOND

Part I

I

At the door of St. George’s registry office,
Charles Clare Winton strolled forward in the wake
of the taxi-cab that was bearing his daughter away
with “the fiddler fellow” she had married.
His sense of decorum forbade his walking with Nurse
Betty—­the only other witness of the wedding.
A stout woman in a highly emotional condition would
have been an incongruous companion to his slim, upright
figure, moving with just that unexaggerated swing
and balance becoming to a lancer of the old school,
even if he has been on the retired list for sixteen
years.

Poor Betty! He thought of her with irritated
sympathy—­she need not have given way to
tears on the door-step. She might well feel lost
now Gyp was gone, but not so lost as himself!
His pale-gloved hand—­the one real hand
he had, for his right hand had been amputated at the
wrist—­twisted vexedly at the small, grizzling
moustache lifting itself from the corners of his firm
lips. On this grey February day he wore no overcoat;
faithful to the absolute, almost shamefaced quietness
of that wedding, he had not even donned black coat
and silk hat, but wore a blue suit and a hard black
felt. The instinct of a soldier and hunting man
to exhibit no sign whatever of emotion did not desert
him this dark day of his life; but his grey-hazel
eyes kept contracting, staring fiercely, contracting
again; and, at moments, as if overpowered by some deep
feeling, they darkened and seemed to draw back in
his head. His face was narrow and weathered
and thin-cheeked, with a clean-cut jaw, small ears,
hair darker than the moustache, but touched at the
side wings with grey—­the face of a man
of action, self-reliant, resourceful. And his
bearing was that of one who has always been a bit
of a dandy, and paid attention to “form,”
yet been conscious sometimes that there were things
beyond. A man, who, preserving all the precision
of a type, yet had in him a streak of something that
was not typical. Such often have tragedy in their
pasts.